I was a two time looser. Wandering through a wasteland of self-pity and depressing fantasies of a life alone, I had resigned myself that I would never have a personal community. I just knew that it'd be me and my 'ol dog, Shadow."Things' didn't help at all. The '53 Chevy pickup in the driveway and a couple of new guns only masked the real problem. Irish whiskey didn't help, either. I was born to be in a highly personal relationship but didn't know how to pull it off.
I knew that, if people ever found out that I wasn't perfect, they'd make cruel sport of me ... even if I was a wounded vet not far removed from the Drug Wars on the Mexican border.Some months into our relationship, I was dismayed to discover a new feeling in my innermost self. It was the unfounded belief that, even if this woman knew all about me, it wouldn't matter; to her or to me.
I ended our spiritually-professional relationship and asked her to go to the Good Earth in Tempe for some tea.
From that first moment, she began to show myself to me in a way I had never experienced.
She was intelligent, witty, self-sufficient, lived in a small rock house in the backyard of a guy who was a Bible-thumper with a great heart. And she sang. She sang beautifully. Even though she was of the Hippie persuasion, she saw right through my martial past and focused on the real me.
She never objected to my banjo playing or to my shooting. Who was this woman?
I couldn't stand it anymore. Whichever of us proposed marriage doesn't matter. It happened.
Since then, it has only been better; even through rough times of disagreements, sicknesses, job losses, moving, our child growing to adulthood and everything else that destroys most matrimonial relationships. You see, even though I'm still a fumbler, she sees right through the fumbling and loves what she sees (it still amazes me that she does).
She's even better now than she was when I met her. She's gone by a fair amount of names but, besides Sweething or Preciosa, I just call her Lady Susanna.
